


At Least It's Something

by peachygreen



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: M/M, Pre-Game Saihara Shuichi, Spoilers For The Entire Game, emeto (briefly), eye trauma (less briefly), i love pregame shuichi literally so much that bitch is so valid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-04 17:59:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14598582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachygreen/pseuds/peachygreen
Summary: “There’s no way. There’s a catch.” Shuichi murmured.“I suppose it depends on how you look at it? The truth is... you’re permitted to live on in the real world, but you can’t keep your bodies, unfortunately. They don’t really belong to you.”(Season 53 has another gimmick, and Shuichi meets his number one fan.)





	1. Chapter 1

“Congratulations,” Tsumugi crowed, “to the survivors of the 53rd season of Danganronpa!”

Upon her declaration massive plumes of confetti flurried into the courtroom, blizzarding, so hard that it smacked against their faces and they had to hide under their hands from the onslaught.

Over the roar, somehow Tsumugi’s voice carried clearly. “You three have won the grand prize! You win a chance to live on in the true, blue, one and only, _actual real outside world_!”

Eventually the confetti started to settle. Himiko had taken off her hat and was madly shaking her head and scrubbing the confetti out of her hair with her hands. Shuichi had yet to take his hands completely off his face, staring dumbly at Tsumugi. Maki hadn’t bothered to move during the ordeal at all, colored paper littering her long hair.

“A ‘chance’ to live on?” Maki deadpanned.

“Yeeep!”

“And what the hell does _chance_ mean?” Maki finally snarled. “Is this about the ‘two survivors’ rule? Don’t try and tell us we have to sacrifice someone for two of us to survive. I’ll really tear your throat out.”

“Ah, no no.” Tsumugi waved her hand. “It’s obvious we’re not going to get another murder out of this cast, so by this point we can handwave that rule. It’s fine, sometimes good TV calls for a little flexibility.”

“I’ll really kill you.”

“Hear me out, first!” Tsumugi held up one finger. “Maybe chance was the wrong word. You have a ‘choice’ to live on!”

Stupefied silence from all three of them. The only sound was faint, broken-sounding humming from the lifeless machine that was once Keebo. Tsumugi continued, “There’s no restriction on it, all three of you can choose to live on if you wish. It’s another new gimmick we’re doing for season 53.” She nodded at Keebo.

“There’s no way. There’s a catch.” Shuichi murmured.

Tsumugi put a finger to her face, glancing upwards thoughtfully. “I suppose it depends on how you look at it? The truth is... you’re permitted to live on in the real world, but you can’t keep your bodies, unfortunately. They don’t really belong to you.”

They floundered in the wake of that incomprehensible statement.

“W-What does _that_ mean?” Himiko stammered.

“Well...” Tsumugi smiled hugely. “About the outside world... I haven’t told you the whooole truth yet!”

They felt like wrung-out rags. They felt like these endless, bottomless twists and subversions distorted themselves anew every time they were looked at. The shape of truth was as fickle as a flickering flame. They felt, all three of them, like dead horses being beaten to a mash. What more could there be? What possible more truth could there be? Truth was becoming a dreaded calamity on the horizon.

“This is a fictional world, like I said, but to go into more detail, it’s a simulated world.”

Simulated...

...world?

“When you signed up for Danganronpa, you all agreed to go under the simulation--”

“This is all a simulation?” Shuichi abruptly shouted, gripping his podium and desperately leaning forward.

Tsumugi huffed. “If you’d _let_ me finish!”

“It’s really a simulation? What happened to everyone? Outside the simulation? Are they alive? Are, are they out there?”

Tsumugi sighed. “Well, yes and no.”

Silence. They stared at her anxiously, like starved and beaten animals.

“Ooh, isn’t this feeling of fragile hope just lovely?” Tsumugi marveled. “Oh, the air is so thick with it...!

Then she looked disappointed. “In the interest of time, though, I can’t really drag this out much longer... So. The people who signed up for season 53 of Danganronpa are alive. The people you knew during the killing game are dead.”

“What do you mean?” Maki gritted.

“It’s like this. The _you_ who signed up for the game-- that is, the real person-- is dormant right now, because their brain is being used for the simulation. When you check out of the simulation-- that is, the _you_ that you are right now _dies_ \-- the real person will wake up. Just like you have no memory of who they are, they have no memory of who you are.”

Tsumugi smiled. “See? That’s how your friends are sorta alive, but mostly they’re dead. Makes sense now, right?”

She was met with dead air, and so happily continued. “Anyways, back to the offer. So, yes, your body in the real world technically doesn’t belong to you. Legally it belongs to your real life counterpart. Sorry. But! This is where the grand prize comes in!”

A plume of confetti once more burst over their heads, startling them all again and making Himiko let out a shriek, which trailed off into whimpers as she held herself and cried.

“You have the choice to live on! Team Danganronpa will provide you with your very own _new_ body! Using the latest cutting-edge technology, it’s equipped with highly responsive silicone skin, real-feeling hair, a highly articulated endoskeleton indistinguishable from human joints, and an extremely intelligent, naturalistic design, made so that the transition from a biological body to a synthetic one is as seamless as possible. It will be modeled personally for you after your original body, of course.”

“Synthetic? Our bodies will be... synthetic? What...?” Shuichi whispered.

“Mm-hmm. Not unlike Keebo, here!” Tsumugi gestured to the depowered machine that was once Keebo. All three of them followed her gesture, staring at Keebo, minds struggling to imagine the confines of that metal body. “Technology these days is really something, isn’t it? Especially with our budget. Your new body will amaze you, plain as day. But that’s if you want to live on, of course.”

“...We still don’t have anywhere to go, out there.” Shuichi said it like he was begging to be contradicted.

“Yep, you don’t.” Tsumugi nodded cheerfully. “We’ll give you a body, but we can’t reconstruct the setting of your entire backstory out there for you. Unfortunately, we have to save that money for season 54.”

“And everyone who died is really gone.” Maki said hollowly.

“To put it plainly, yes.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Harukawa-san!” Shuichi cried out.

“Let the real me deal with this shit. Let her live on, whatever.” Maki looked at Shuichi, tired to the marrow of her bones. “Everything I wanted to live for died in this game. Or it was made up in the first place. And my only option is some joke of a life where I’m not even allowed to be _human_ anymore. That’s just worse than death to me, Saihara-kun. That’s all.” By the end, her voice had turned soft.

“I don’t wa-wanna either.” Himiko sobbed quietly.

“Yumeno-san, please...” Shuichi pleaded, horrified that this was happening. “If we all agree to it, won’t we at least be able to deal with it together?”

“I think I’d rather go to sleep.” Himiko’s voice was thick with tears, but so soft. “And let the real me wake up. Like from a bad dream.”

“Please... both of you, please reconsider.”

“You want to do it, Saihara-kun?” Maki asked.

“I...” Shuichi hesitated, before bursting into a trembling ferocity. “Isn’t... isn’t any life at all, better than no life!? No matter how bad it is... at least it’s something, it’s a _chance!_ ”

Then he deflated, whispering, “...Is that cowardly of me, Harukawa-san?”

She hadn’t even blinked at him raising his voice. She answered, “That depends on how bad it is out there, I guess. But I’m done. I just am. I don’t want to keep watching the scrap of life I still have get ripped away, watching my piece get smaller and smaller. Until what I am can’t be called alive anymore. I’m done.”

“I’m done,” Himiko echoed.

Shuichi looked between his last two remaining friends. Friends he was seconds away from losing, too, at last.

“O-kay! That’s two opt-outs. Saihara-kun, you’re going to live on?”

Shuichi stared blankly.

“Saihara-kun? I need your confirmation. You’re accepting the prize?”

He was only dimly aware of what he was nodding for.

He didn’t notice the massive, hallucinogenicly colorful “WINNER!” scrolling text that lit up directly over his head. He didn’t notice the renewed plumes of confetti. There was a roaring in his ears that deafened him, and blurriness in his eyes that blinded him, and all he could see were Maki and Himiko looking back at him like he was all that they could see too. There were flashing lights and trumpeting sounds everywhere as Shuichi’s podium lowered, but in their world of three, it was pitch black and dead silent.

That was the last time he saw them. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

 

* * *

 

There was rush of sound and light, a rush so violent it felt like it had pierced his eardrums, drilled through to the center of his brain, and scrambled everything inside.

He tried to gasp but there was something locking his chest in place. He couldn’t breath, if he couldn’t breath he was going to die, he was dying.

There was nothing, nothing but whiteness and hissing. He felt so cold, frozen.

There was a roaring, that grew louder, louder, louder, _louder, louder..._

The whiteness began to color in, with a sight. A sight that Shuichi didn’t understand in the least at first. And the roaring began to come into focus, and his ears began to understand it as something else. The white steam continued to evaporate, until Shuichi could see that he was surrounded by people clapping. Applauding uproariously.

He tried to retreat but there was something against his back. His frantic, clammy hands felt metal. He squeezed himself into the small vertical pod he didn’t understand but found himself in, but the applauding men only approached, crowded closer, still with those grins stretched across their sallow faces.

“Don’t be afraid, Saihara-kun.” One of them said. Shuichi’s heart gripped in feral terror. Why did they know his name? Who were these people?

“Congratulations to the winner of the 53rd season!” Another called out, and the whole room burst into baritone cheers and whoops.

Shuichi trembled. “What’s happening?”

“You’re in the real world, Saihara-kun.” One of the men, who like all of them was wearing a white coat, said. He said to another person, loud enough to hear quite clearly, “You’d think he’d deduce that.” That earned a moderate laugh from the room.

Shuichi’s eyes flitted around. His chest still felt too tight. “H... Huh?” He couldn’t think clearly. “The real world...?”

“Yes.” Another man stepped forward. Too close. Shuichi tried to press his back harder against the wall, though it wasn’t possible.

“You are the winner of the 53rd season of Danganronpa, and you agreed to participate in one of the gimmicks of this season, which was that a fictional character who survived the game would have the option to be given life outside the show. It’s all rather experimental, but the technology has been tested extensively. You should be able to subsist in that body much as you did in the body you’re used to, with minor differences.”

“You’re also lucky,” Another man piped up. “The kid who auditioned for your role agreed to take you home.”

Shuichi struggled to keep up. “Take me... home?”

“If he hadn’t, the truth is, we’d be in a bit of a bind, legally. You’re technically not a citizen of Japan, or anywhere else. You’d be considered a property of Team Danganronpa, and probably would’ve gotten either scrapped or recycled for a future season.”

“You were promised a prize, but since legally you’re not really a person, it’s not possible to form a contract with _you_. The auditionee is the one who puts his name on the dotted line. He agreed to take ownership of you, so you get to walk out of here just fine. Good thing. A shiny chunk of the budget this season went into you.”

“Right, it’d be a shame if this promotional gimmick went to waste after how much money was put into it.”

“I’m not a person?” Shuichi whispered.

Some of the men looked at each other. One coughed. A few broke out into chuckles.

“You’re more like a collector’s item. The grand prize for the real winner.”

 

* * *

 

There were a lot of hands. A great wide blur of hands, that went on touching him and grabbing him and dragging him around for a time that Shuichi couldn’t estimate, but that felt agonizingly long.

Sometimes they put things on him, things that had wires and monitors. A little clip-like thing with a tiny scanner with a divot for his finger got put on him. It frightened him, but didn’t hurt. Another time a needle pinched his arm without warning, without time for him to brace himself, and he cried out, but not one of the blurry hands around him paused on his account.

Disheveled and nearly unhinged, Shuichi found himself at some point sitting in a chair, in an empty room. No, not quite empty, there was a man standing by the door, in a more blue-collar looking uniform than the others. He felt like a single spider thread suspending a grand piano, and if one more person touched him he might scream.

Time passed. Nothing happened. Shuichi sat in a room.

He still couldn’t breath. There was still something wrong with his chest.

The floors were white tile. The walls were a beige color.

Nothing happened.

Then the clamor of many footsteps approached the door, the rising action to the climax of the door screeching open, and a man’s voice shattered the stillness like a sledgehammer.

“He’s in his adjustment phase-- ah.” The man stopped. More men shuffled in through the door. The number of men seemed to multiply in the eyes of Shuichi, who had leaped up from his chair so quickly the chair had tipped and fallen with a loud racket.

“Saihara-kun, that’s really not necessary.”

He was backing up again, until his back hit the wall farthest from the door, and he kept backing up in any direction he could until he was pressed into a corner. The room had no windows and only one door.

“You see what I mean.” The man sighed. “Nothing at fault with the hardware, I’m sure. He’s maybe _too_ articulated, if anything. A less robust data upload would surely result in a more consumer-friendly--”

The smaller person he was speaking to pushed right past him, ignoring him outright and making the man cut himself off with surprise.

“Saihara?” Gasped a grinning mirror image of himself.

Shuichi stared blindly, incomprehensibly.

“Hi, hi there,” Breathed his doppelganger, panting as if he just ran a mile. “I’m so sorry I’m late Saihara, I came right after school, as fast as I could. I wanted to call out sick but I didn’t have any sick days left. I missed the train, too, and that was my fault, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying good enough attention because I didn’t get much sleep the last three days because I-- I was just-- I-I was just so excited!”

“Who are you?” Shuichi thought he knew, but also didn’t trust that he knew anything at all.

“Saihara-kun, meet Kagehara-kun.” The snubbed man from earlier coughed, stepping into his line of sight again, which was about 75% filled at the moment by the proximity of his doppelganger’s grinning, sweaty face. “He auditioned for Danganronpa for the role of Ultimate Detective.

“You were amazing,” Kagehara seemed to melt, boneless from adoration. “I binged all of season 53 as soon as I woke up, that’s why I didn’t sleep. That’s also why all my sick days are gone. I’m so, so, _sososo_ happy you picked the choice to live on. I’m so happy I get to meet you. You were my favorite of the season. T-Top three for sure!”

“Ahem. Now, we just have a little more paperwork to--”

“I already can’t wait to rewatch it. Everything after trial four was, like-- ohmigod, I forgot to breath. Ouma was amazing, I _neeever_ saw the culprit coming, first Gokuhara and then Momota? Honestly I was almost disappointed when Momota came out of the exisal. Almost, but he was so cool a-a-and heroic by the end that, like I don’t usually go for that type but he was great! And Harumaki and Yumeno are so cute too! I wish they had come over to the real world too, I wish I could’ve had them too--”

“They wouldn’t have been released to you, in that event.” The man tried to reinsert himself, “They would’ve gone to the auditionees who--”

“I can’t wait until the last episode of season 53 is released, it’s amazing to be one of only sixteen people who get early access but they made me sign my name so that I couldn’t leak it! Hey Saihara, which girl did you like best? Oh! God, duh, I’m so sorry. That’s a stupid question, you canonly liked the Ultimate Pianist. What was her name? She was so early I kinda forgot. Anyway, I thought the cutest was--”

“ _Young man._ ”

Kagehara halted in his rant--throughout which he had breathed very infrequently, turning redder and redder-- by a firm hand clamping down on his shoulder.

After the admonishment Kagehara had calmed down from his frenzied appearance when talking about Danganronpa, though it had dialed down from “raving lunatic” to only about “physically vibrating with nervous energy.”

They-- the men and Kagehara-- were standing around a desk with a small stack of papers on it, and Kagehara was holding a pen. Shuichi’s mind had finally caught up to the fact that something irreversible was happening, and this was probably his last chance to speak up.

“I don’t want to go with him.” Shuichi said.

All eyes snapped to him, where he still stood in his corner.

“Come again?” A man said.

“What if I don’t want to go with him?” Shuichi’s voice was tired and meek.

“You are already the property of Kagehara-kun here. Those documents were filed days ago. This is just the warranty papers.”

Shuichi fell silent. Eventually everyone turned their attentions back to the papers, except for Kagehara, who stared at Shuichi with a surprised expression. Then his attention was called back to the documents, and he tore his eyes away with apparent reluctance.

 

* * *

 

Shuichi sat in the backseat of a black van being driven by a chauffeur, Kagehara beside him, and there was no conversation that could fill the vast and terrible silence inside of him.

But Kagehara kept trying.

“I c-cleaned up a little... at least your room is done.” With Kagehara looking at him all the time, Shuichi couldn’t avoid meeting his eyes. He couldn’t avoid feeling him either, feeling their arms pressed together, because Kagehara was sitting as close to him as the seatbelts would allow.

“I need to buy a new futon, I haven’t had the time yet. Don’t worry, I gave you the cleanest linens I had. If you don’t like the futon you can take my room, I-I don’t mind, but um, I haven’t had the time to clean it, I just woke up four days ago, myself, and I’ve been inside every day binge-watching so I should probably open the window or something, h-haha.”

“If you had four days, why didn’t you prepare first, then watch your show after?” Shuichi spoke his first words of the entire car trip. They came out rather bitter.

It seemed to leave Kagehara stunned. Then he said, too loudly and directly in Shuichi’s ear, “ _I slept through the entirety of season 53_! Everyone,” He barreled on heedless of Shuichi’s angry wince in his direction, “ _Everyone_ was caught up but me! Th-th-the first thing I saw when I checked my feed the day I woke up was a Danganronpa spoiler! And I _star_ in this season! And I had _exclusive_ early access to the finale!”

His face got closer and closer. For as much Shuichi leaned back, Kagehara leaned forward, absolutely wild eyed. “I only had a few days until the final episode would be released and everyone was going to be posting about it. If I had gotten spoiled on the _finale_ this season, _on my season_ , I would have _killed myself_.”

He said it with such conviction, like it wasn’t just a vulgar hyperbole, but the bald truth.

Shuichi didn’t care right then, he was just desperate for the slightest bit of breathing room. “G-Get off of me.”

That made Kagehara blink. He apparently just realized how close he had gotten. He leaned back in his seat as per Shuichi’s request, but the puzzled look on his face remained.

 

* * *

 

The apartment building Kagehara lived in was... normal. A little quaint. It was two-story, and Kagehara lived on the second floor. Shuichi had no bags to carry. Kagehara toted his shoulder schoolbag, and a large plastic bag of free promotional Danganronpa merchandise “courtesy of the staff.”

“T-Technically I’m not supposed to have flatmates but, the landlord’s never around and the other tenants don’t care, so um, you can walk around whenever you want.” Kagehara was clumsily fishing for his keys in his schoolbag.

“Do you live here alone?” Shuichi asked, watching him repeatedly fail to jab the key in the keyhole, clacking against the scratched and badly scuffed rim, implying a history of failure.

Finally getting the key in, Kagehara turned it and the door swung open. “Y-Yes! Um, my parents send me money every two weeks.”

Shuichi followed him inside. He didn’t see much of an alternative. “You’re... are you close with your parents?” He couldn’t squash his slight curiosity. Call it an Ultimate Detective’s achilles heel.

“Not really. I think that’s where Team Danganronpa got the idea for your parents abandoning you, Saihara.” Kagehara said blithely, making him instantly regret asking.

“They didn’t abandon me,” Shuichi said.

Kagehara stared at him, like he’d said the earth was flat. “Uhh. Yes they did. You gave that backstory in episode--”

“They’re not real. I never had parents. There was no one to abandon me in the first place.”

Kagehara stared at him once more. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Shuichi had two seconds to feel some hollow emotion approaching satisfaction, before Kagehara finally said, “Well, aren’t they as real as you are?”

Shuichi said nothing to that.

“Hey, um. Don’t feel bad?” Kagehara smiled, a graceless and desperate thing. “Being real is overrated? I probably see my parents as much as you do, so. What’s the difference?”

Huh. Shuichi said nothing to that, either, but he did glance up at Kagehara for a moment.

His parents were as real as Shuichi was, and Shuichi was 100% fictional, fake, phony, a facsimile, a mimic of humanity. He didn’t know if he was taking it extremely well, or if it hadn’t yet sunken in. He didn’t feel anything about it. He didn’t feel like he was sinking, or maybe he didn’t know what sinking felt like, or maybe had already sunk without realizing. But he did think that what Kagehara had said felt like a thin thread leading out of the bog. So even though he didn’t really understand what he was grasping at, for now it was enough to grasp at it.

 

* * *

 

Shuichi lay curled up under the futon that had been designated as his. The room that Kagehara had prepared for him was small, off-white, and scarcely furnished at all. Back home, in his uncle’s apartment, Shuichi’s room had been also small, but welcoming, tranquil, painted in blues and slates. He remembered how the carpeting felt under his socked feet. By the door frame there had been horizontal lines etched into the wall, celebrating his growth spurts since the age of twelve. His shelves were lined with mystery novels, many of which were presents from his uncle.

His home was a lie. This room was a stranger.

What was he meant to do with this life?

Shuichi stared at a crack on the wall, too wired to fall asleep, too exhausted to move. So instead his thoughts spun in dizzying circles.

He could permissibly be called alive, and real. His memories and most of the people in them were not, but the memories he made from this point onward were real, and his actions held weight. He knew his body wasn’t biological; he finally realized why his chest felt tight all the time now, it was because he no longer had lungs to fill. But he had stared at his hands extensively by now, turning them over and touching them, and if he didn’t know better he would’ve thought they were made of innocent, innocuous flesh. Whatever he was made out of, it was impressive. In the way that removing a person’s organs and reorganizing them all upside down and backwards and rendering the person an abominable lump but one that technically fit the definition of living was impressive.

He had no family or home to return to. No friends. No survivors. Shuichi wished that Himiko and Maki had followed him, but also understood where they had been coming from. Death was less hopeless than this. He still thought that it would have been a little better with them all together, though. Or at least he wouldn’t be so utterly alone.

Kaito. Kaede. Even Kokichi. Shuichi wished he could see any of them again, talk to any of them for just one moment. He wanted to tell them how much he missed them. He wanted Kaito to tussle his hair. He wanted Kaede to tell him he’ll be okay. He wanted Kokichi to give him something to think about. He wanted to see Gonta’s smile, to hear Tenko arguing, to eat Kirumi’s cooking, to hear Miu’s cackle. He wanted to hug his uncle and smell his faded cologne.

But those people were all gone where Shuichi couldn’t reach them, and they didn’t exist anywhere anymore but Shuichi’s memory. That thought was the loneliest of all.

...Ah, but it wasn’t exactly true, was it? Everything had been televised, after all, hadn’t it. That’s right.

Shuichi still stared at that same crack in the wall.

It was probably very pertinent knowledge, the fact of just how popular Danganronpa was. From the way Tsumugi had talked about it, she had made it sound like the entire world spun on the axis of Danganronpa, but she could simply be a show-runner buying into her own hype. It was clear a percentage of the fans were obsessive; Kagehara showed more than clear signs, and Shuichi had seen some of the scrolling comments during the last trial say things like “ _I want to break Shuichi’s fingers_ ,” and “ _I want to see the color of Shuichi’s blood_ ,” before he started ferociously ignoring them. But, how large a percentage? And how large a percentage of the country’s population were fans? If it was too large, was there a country where Danganronpa was less popular? Did Shuichi even have correct basic knowledge of the world’s geography?

That last one, at least, he could almost certainly verify at some point. Maybe that would be his starting point to understanding this world. This entire world that was a stranger to him, full of strangers, full of shadow figures who all knew every private wish and broken dream in his synthetic heart.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It was funny. You might assume that your natural course of action upon your consciousness being transferred into a foreign physical vessel would be, when given the opportunity, to first look in a mirror.

Shuichi didn’t get any sleep last night. He’d laid in that futon all afternoon and all through the night, hour after hour, and he hadn’t dozed for so much as one minute. It was almost eight in the morning now, according to the kitchen stove’s built-in clock.

Kagehara had left an hour ago, presumably for school. The sound of him walking around had reached Shuichi’s ears through the wall, sending raw thrums of anxiety through his already frayed nerves from his utterly sleepless night. He prayed over and over for Kagehara not to bother him, to just leave him alone. At one point his worry peaked when the footsteps grew closer to his door and he heard a crack that sounded distinctly like the door opening. He froze, eyes remaining resolutely closed. He had no breathing to keep even.

In the end, nothing happened. Shuichi had waited tensely for as long as he could, maybe ten minutes, and when he didn’t hear so much as another creak he tried to peek from under his eyelashes. No one was there, but his door had indeed been opened a bit.

When he discovered to his relief that the apartment was empty, Shuichi set about exploring it. He’d sort of shut himself inside his room the moment Kagehara had shown it to him yesterday. He might’ve even slammed the door in his face, a little.

He had several things he needed to check. He did these things in an order, and the bathroom, with its guarantee of a mirror, was last in that order.

So was, for that matter, Kagehara’s bedroom. It was the nearest door to Shuichi’s, connected via the living room (or a sad excuse for one with nothing to call furniture but a standing fan, three filled garbage bags, and still more miscellaneous litter on the floor) and so he happened to open it first. It had creaked open halfway before Shuichi had seen the Danganronpa branding covering every inch of the _sliver_ of wall he could see, and shut the door again.

A small entrance way lead to the front door. Shuichi knew he wasn’t ready to go outside, but he unbolted the door and peeked out anyway. Just to assure himself that it wasn’t trip-wired or anything.

It was strange, though, for Kagehara to have apparently taken no precautions against him leaving. What was to stop him? ...What _was_ stopping him?

Nothing, Shuichi told himself. He was just going to poke around first, that’s all. He just needed to do a few practical things, like change out of his surely recognizable Ultimate Detective’s uniform, maybe grab something that concealed his face better. Maybe steal some money if Kagehara had bills lying around, so that he might make a more permanent getaway.

Maybe. Or maybe he should make a plan before venturing out where a target might be potentially painted on his head.

The apartment. First things first.

Having said that, though, there wasn’t much else of note. The kitchen hadn’t gotten the same “cleanup” that the living room had, as it had even more garbage littering the floor,  empty snack wrappers and cartons trampled underfoot, and cardboard boxes shoved against the wall. There weren’t any dirty dishes in the sink, but the reason why was quickly deduced when Shuichi found foam plates and plastic utensils in the cupboard. The fridge was empty apart from two pints of soda and an opened packet of string cheese that was visibly culturing blue fuzz.

To say Kagehara wasn’t taking care of himself was an understatement.

Up til now Shuichi hadn’t felt particularly sympathetic towards his lookalike (to use the gentler term, rather than _real self_ ), too occupied feeling anxiety and wrath towards him and just about everything else. But even Shuichi, his life being what it was, felt pity for the other right now. Kagehara really lived like this.

Why? What went so wrong in his life that the rooms of his apartment barely had a single piece of furniture between them? Even Shuichi had false memories of a kind uncle, didn’t Kagehara have anything? Anyone?

Is this what the apartment of someone who’d beg to enter the killing game looked like?

There was also ice cream in the freezer. It was a Danganronpa themed tub of half-vanilla and half-chocolate ice cream, half-empty. Shuichi was by now well adjusted to the sight of things that he hated, so he had relatively little qualms about grabbing a plastic spoon and using it to test if he could still eat.

He hadn’t felt hungry all this time, he’d noticed, so he hadn’t been certain. But the ice cream seemed to go down fine; he could taste it and everything. What in the world was happening inside him when he did that? Was this body really no different from his normal one? The fact was that he didn’t breath anymore, though...

With that, he knew he’d put it off for as long as he could.

Shuichi had always been the type to turtle shell and avoid his fears for as long as possible, but even he thought it might be turn out to be a bit silly, avoiding his reflection like this. His hands still looked astonishingly human, after all, not like doll hands or anything like that.

When he finally overcame his nerves and looked, what he found was that he’d been right to dread it.

His eyes fell immediately upon the black vertical lines running down his cheeks like tear tracks. His mind blanked in self-defense. Shuichi didn’t feel anything as he touched them, felt their rubber-like texture in contrast with the rest of his natural-feeling skin, the way they were absolutely not painted-on and were built-in, embedded, just as much a part of his face as his skin. He tried his best to keep feeling nothing even as his grief swelled like a wave about to crash.

_Not unlike Keebo, here,_ Tsumugi’s words came back to him. Why design his body this way? Why, why ensure he could never easily blend in among regular people?

The answer was self-evident, of course.

Shuichi felt it, the familiar desire to give up and run away. It was something he’d become almost competent at fighting down, when he had an important reason to, when he had something to fight for. Right now, he would give up in a heartbeat. If only he knew what constituted “giving up” in his situation. There was no where to run away to; some messed-up aesthetic decision has doomed him to an unconcealably unnatural visage that would earn him questions anywhere there was people.

Why? They’d gone to the trouble of delicately recreating Shuichi’s eye color down to the color swatch, but raked two black barbarous scabs down his cheeks branding him a Team Danganronpa production forever.

He wondered if this was what Keebo was talking about when he’d raved about robophobia. Shuichi found himself imagining Keebo’s struggles to fit in with humans in the days before the killing game, which was absurd since they never even took place. Was there a point to empathizing with Keebo now? Was it a futile exercise to feel humbled over troubles that had never really stricken his friend, that were falsified, that his friend had only _felt_ were real, during the time that Keebo had been existent?

Woven throughout all these grieving thoughts dizzying Shuichi’s mind was futility, futility, futility. There was no point to thinking any of this. It was a waste of energy and thinking them wouldn’t bring any closure or comfort to Keebo or himself.

He thought to breath in and exhale while counting to ten, like his uncle had once taught him. But he didn’t have lungs anymore. Shuichi dug his thumbnail into his pointer finger until it was painful instead.

He knew it was pointless to sit down and try to collect himself, he had to keep moving. He shrugged off his jacket, lifting his shirt and peeking at his abdomen. Everything there _looked_ to be much the same, no tube-baby navel-lessness to be found, but actually feeling around with his hands... something was wrong. He could feel internal structures that were inhuman, incorrect, repulsive to the basest self-preservatory instincts of his brain. Feeling it was something he couldn’t withstand for long; he stopped with a shiver.

As for... everything else, at a glance it appeared to be much the same too. An actual person, _a total stranger_ , had to have had a hand in that.

Rather than linger and let _that_ trauma set in, Shuichi hurriedly moved on to exploring the machinations of his manufactured face. Opening his mouth revealed 32 teeth all present and accounted for, nothing out of the usual, until Shuichi noticed that his mouth, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to produce saliva anymore. That’s fun. Pulling at his hair and pinching his own cheek didn’t yield anything remarkable, except to confirm that he indeed still felt pain, once again for whatever reason. He poked around the orbit of his eye... and something felt off.

He frowned. A gentle, experimental press to the white of his eye dawned a fresh horror on him. It felt cool, and hard. Like a marble. Or more accurately, a glass eye. He could tap his eye and hear a _clink_. His eyeballs were some type of glass, now, fantastic. Although the slightest contact with his pupil still stung and made him blink tears away, and he was baffled as to why. Knowing that it was a total artificial reaction, it felt absurd that some designer had arbitrarily decided it as something he should have.

Having exhausted his morbid curiosity, Shuichi once again looked at himself in the mirror. His eyebrows were delicately cinched, expression one of barely subdued distress. Without the black streaks, he would’ve looked so much the same, so human. He could’ve run away somewhere where Danganronpa wasn’t popular and had some hope of a normal life, maybe. With this, it was going to be even harder than it already had to be.

He couldn’t think of anything else to do in here. So, the last room in the apartment he had yet to investigate was Kagehara’s room.

It was the only place Kagehara could possibly keep his clothes, and also his money unless he only carried it on him or hid it in a trash bag or something. But Shuichi doubted it, since Kagehara hadn’t acted particularly mistrustful towards him so far, and in fact it was rather the opposite. He’d left him alone with seemingly nothing stopping him from walking out the front door. He’d apparently checked up on Shuichi this morning, but hadn’t bothered him beyond that. He’d even offered to let Shuichi take his own bedroom, hadn’t he? Kagehara clearly didn’t have much, but the way he had acted towards Shuichi so far could almost be called generous.

Shuichi’s feelings about Kagehara still weren’t positive by any means, but they were beginning to grow more complicated. Kagehara seemed like a such a volatile person, like someone deeply disconnected from life... Shuichi had seen his eyes in the audition video, hollow to his core, nothing there of substance to relate to. If nothing else, outside the video Kagehara at least possessed the barest scrap of humanity, a sense of a maladjusted, pitiable teenage boy. It wasn’t particularly likable or admirable, but at least it could be understood. In person, Kagehara carried a fragility and self-consciousness about him that had been left off the screen, when he’d gushed about his own, _their_ own execution, so wantonly that it still disturbed Shuichi to think about. Under no circumstances did he want to know what the inside of Kagehara’s head looked like.

When he looked around this sad apartment, though... he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. How much money did his parents send him? What if stealing from him put his housing in jeopardy? If it did, could Shuichi still bring himself to do it?

Bracing himself for an unpleasant sight, Shuichi pushed open Kagehara’s door.

The first thing that hit him was the smell.

The wall-to-wall fan posters made the room an oppressive cacophony of black and red, there were even posters on the ceiling, and the sight of multiple large Monokuma plushes triggered Shuichi’s fight or flight response, but the most immediate repugnant assault was the overpowering corpse smell, thick and unmistakable even under a more mundane layer of sweat and musk. This was unlike the smell of death that Shuichi was used to, of blood freshly spilled, or else no older than a few hours. This was something much older, something putrefacted, but wherever it was coming from wasn’t obvious right now.

Shuichi stood in the doorway holding his shirt over his nose, recontextualizing a few things.

He’d been naive.

He _absolutely could not_ stay in this place.

There was something wrong, something even more wrong with Kagehara than he’d thought. This room...

Kagehara’s room was slightly larger than Shuichi’s, but the overcrowded posters made the walls feel like they were closing in, and the tangle of garbage underfoot made it impossible to step anywhere clean. There were shirts and other dirty clothing in a patchwork on the floor, twice the amount of garbage as the kitchen, and an added layer of two or three dozen discarded balled-up tissues, looking yellowed from age.

Shuichi also cremated any concerns he had for Kagehara’s financial situation. He had a shelf filled to bursting with figurines of obnoxiously vibrant characters, some of whom he recognized from Tsumugi’s frenzied cosplaying during the final trial. He had a Monokuma plush on his bed so large that it looked as though a human being could potentially cut it open and crawl inside. On the bottom shelf, next to a shoe box, there was a rather expensive looking video camera.

In contrast to the claustrophobicly abundant merchandising, Kagehara had only a simple desk and chair, his mattress had no sheets, and he had a TV that sat on the floor without any kind of stand, wires weaving among the litter like black jungle roots. It was now obvious how Kagehara probably spent almost every penny of what his parents sent him.

On his desk sat a laptop.

Gingerly, Shuichi sat down at the desk. He hit a key, and the screen lit up and prompted him for a password. He stared icily, then typed, “ _danganronpa.”_

Gee, it worked. They didn’t call him the Ultimate Detective for nothing.

His intention was to draft a mental map of his options, get his bearings in the world a little bit. Find out Kagehara’s address, for a start. Then look up a bit about the surrounding area, local news, national news, geopolitical climate, train routes...

When he opened the browser however what he saw was Kagehara’s twitter profile. He knew it was Kagehara’s from the latest tweet, which was from four days ago: it was a selfie with Kagehara lying in some sort of medical facility, an oxygen mask over his pale face, an arterial line in his thin wrist, throwing the peace sign cheerfully. The caption simply read, “ _Thank you so much, Danganronpa season 53! Please look forward to the finale!_ ”

The tweet had almost ten thousand replies and well over two hundred thousand likes. Kagehara’s twitter, he just noticed, had 49.9 million followers.

It shouldn’t have been... important, but Shuichi’s curiosity was peaked anyway. Was Kagehara some kind of online celebrity? Was it just because of the killing game? Was it indicative of Danganronpa’s popularity? It also made him nervous, because if Kagehara’s face was well known, and he and Kagehara shared the same face...

He clicked through the hospital selfie, curious about the comments. The very first one read:

_“Thank you, Saihara-chan❤︎❤︎❤︎ you are my favorite character in the whole franchise!! I’m a new follower but I just went through your whooole twitter and I’m even more in love now❤︎ The danganronpa club at my school is going to get together when the final episode airs!  Im sooo excited!! Please get well soon!!❤︎❤︎❤︎”_

The second one read:

_“i wanted to see saihara-kun cry while getting executed :c...”_

The third comment down was in reply to the second:

_“kill urself on cam please you'll get so many followers!!! preferably something slow and agonizing tho??”_

Shuichi kept reading. On it went:

_“wwww kage-chan looks so happy, lying in a hospital bed~ how many times have you masturbated today ?? what's your record??? ^q^”_

_“pls let me eat you... i just want a finger or a used tissue or anything with your dead skin cells i just want you in my blood!! <3 <3_”

_“Okay but saihara might as well be a national resource??? how do we share him. who gets what part”_

_“saihara what would it take for you to sleep with a fan?”_

_“saihara i carved your name into both of my thighs, wanna see?”_

_“AAHHHHH SHUICHI WILL YOU PLEASE BE MY BOYFRIEND???? WE CAN DO CAMSHOWS TOGETHER DKSJFNSMMDM AHHHHH I’LL EVEN GIVE YOU MONEY IF YOU AGREE PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEAAAAAASE I HAVE A WALL COVERED IN YOUR PICTURES AND I FUCK MYSELF EVERY NIGHT THINKING ABOUT YOUR PALE NECK GLISTENING WITH SWEAT AND YOUR SWEET LIPS SAYING MY NAME PLEASE SHUICHI I LOVE DANGANRONPA TOO”_

Shuichi closed the window.

He sat there, trying to think of what to do. He tried to think about logistics and plans and best-case-scenarios and running away or staying put but all he could feel was sick. He just wanted to crawl in a hole and curl up and petrify. Right now, he needed to think of what to do. What to do. He looked down, glazed eyes landing on one of the crumpled tissues--

_He wanted this to stop so badly._

Couldn’t it all just stop? Couldn’t these ten thousand messages go away? Couldn’t Kagehara and the men in white coats and everyone on the planet just leave him alone? Please go away, he couldn’t be the one you’re after. Shuichi didn’t have anything to do with this. Shuichi has never had anything to do with anything like this. He just wanted to live, he’d just wanted his friends to live. Why were things like this? Hadn’t he tried his hardest? Hadn’t he fought tooth and nail? So why were things like this?

He hunched in on himself, digging his thumbnail into his finger again, taking his overpowering panic out on himself. He tried to use pain to forcibly leash his rampant thoughts but they bucked and trampled him. Was that what this world was like? Was that really it? Was this really a world of ravenous predators who wanted to tear him to pieces, and had he really been stranded all alone in a world like this? Why did they want _Shuichi_? What had he ever, ever, ever, ever done to attract this kind of attention?

He needed to run away, somewhere where no one knew him. He’d find something to cover his face and would never ever take it off. He could run for a long time, longer than a human body that needed sleep and food, he could do it. That’s smart, wasn’t it? He could use this body to his advantage, he didn’t need to spend anything on food and motels. Maybe with enough money he could afford a plastic surgeon and pay for their silence. It was a ridiculous, almost childish idea but it was hopeful, it gave him a reason to get up from Kagehara’s desk on shaky legs and _do_ something.

It felt like he was dragging his body, but he started pilfering around Kagehara’s room, no longer caring about what filth he was stepping on. He ransacked the shelves, uncaringly knocking the stupid figures to the floor. He wasn’t planning on being here when Kagehara was guaranteed to throw a fit over it. He didn’t find money hidden behind any of the items there, so he turned his attention to the shoebox on the bottom shelf. He took it out and opened the top--

It was filled with thin metallic objects that Shuichi recognized, ranging from a small hack saw to a serrated knife to medical-grade but unsterile surgical equipment, all items meant for butchering something made of flesh and blood. Opening the shoe box further revealed a small silicone pink-- and a large, black-- _why did Kagehara have a_ \--

Shuichi shut the lid as quick as physically possible. There was nothing of use in there, there just wasn’t.

However, if he took the camera and the laptop, once he made it to somewhere safe he could put out an ad and easily sell the camera for a quick buck. He could use that money to get him farther. He wouldn’t make it anywhere without the laptop’s charger, though, so he added that to his mental list of things to search for. In the closet he found some hanging clothes, the most decorous of which was Kagehara’s school uniform and the rest being careless, almost slovenly casual wear. Most usefully, he found a small duffel bag. He assumed the hanging clothes were at least cleaner than the ones on the floor and stuffed all but the school uniform in the bag.

And then he made another important discovery-- in the closet, he found a box of disposable face masks.

Putting one on, he dragged his feet to the bathroom. His mind felt energized, but for some reason his body was fighting him, as if it were fighting his half-baked plan, as if some part of him knew this was a terrible idea and was trying to get him to listen. Ignoring it with fierce desperation, Shuichi looked at himself in the mirror.

It... it wasn’t perfect. But it wasn’t bad either. It was surprisingly effective at hiding the black lines, if you didn’t look at his eyes too closely.

Now it was back to Kagehara’s room, as Shuichi intended to change out of his Ultimate Detective uniform before the grim undertaking of going outside. On the way, he detoured to the kitchen to check the time. It was already past noon somehow. How had that many hours slipped by? Shuichi felt like he hadn’t done anything except a whole lot of feeling sorry for himself and panicking in different rooms of the apartment. There weren’t even that many rooms in this dump, and yet four hours had passed. Provided he was at school, Kagehara wouldn’t be home in five minutes or anything, but it still shot Shuichi with adrenaline. The bigger head start he had once his absence was realized, the better. But even though he meant to hurry, his legs lumbered weakly against his wishes.

Something was wrong. This wasn’t anything to do with his mental state anymore; his body really wasn’t listening to him. Shuichi made it back to Kagehara’s room only by using the wall to support himself. Was this because of lack of sleep? But he wasn’t tired at all. He wasn’t hungry at all. Nothing about Shuichi’s experience with human limitations could tell him what he was lacking, why this was happening.

Something in Kagehara’s room tripped him. He had no idea what, but he fell harshly, banging his chin on the hard floor, barely cushioned by an article of dirty laundry. He tried to push himself up, but his arms got as far as bracing against the floor, with not even a fraction of the strength needed to push. Even that strength was quickly fleeing him. By the time his hands fell uselessly by the sides of his head, he didn’t even have the strength to turn his face. He laid there, stuck staring directly at the mocking grin of a Monokuma plush.

Even his eyes were frozen open. He couldn’t move or shut them. They didn’t water, nor did they feel dried out, because they were made of glass. Shuichi couldn’t move anything at all anymore. His face showed no expression, a doll-like impassiveness. The enchanting spell of the remarkable humanity in his face broke once it went utterly inanimate; only now did he look fake.

Inside, Shuichi was painfully present. He was present for all the hurt of confusion and panic and trying and failing. He was still Shuichi, still a trapped nervous wreck who was tortuously sensitive to every minute that was wasted, and terrified of what would happen if he didn’t get up before Kagehara came home to see him like this. To see what he had obviously been planning. Shuichi fought to move. But it was useless.

It was useless. He would have been better off trying nothing, exploring nothing, remaining ignorant of the laptop, just staying in bed.

Why was this happening to him?

He kept running up against disbelief. He had expected problems; this did not feel like the problem that should’ve stopped him. It felt insulting. He had been looking ahead so much to the complicated and tricky life he would have to navigate as a runaway, that this was just ugly and cruel in its simplicity. He couldn’t understand or anticipate the problem of his body simply _refusing to work_ for no reason that he could fathom. It had to be a joke. He thought pulling off his runaway plan would be difficult? Try making it out the front door.

Shuichi lay there, useless and helpless, surrounded by the evidence of his failure, steeped in the stench of death, as Monokuma grinned at his expense for an eternity.

 

* * *

 

Sounds. At the front door. The nervous little scratches of a key failing to enter the lock.

The pained whine of the door creeping open.

Footsteps.

“Saihara?”

Footsteps, approaching.

“Ah...”

Kagehara didn’t speak for another moment. Shuichi had no way of checking what he was doing or how angry he looked. Shuichi couldn’t do anything but lay there and wait. Wait like veal tied up in knots.

“...You threw my collection all over the floor.”

There was a hand on his neck, and Shuichi would scream if he could. But the hand gently lifted him, with the aid of another hand on his waist, to a sitting position. His body was cradled and turned to face Kagehara.

Kagehara did not look angry, so much. It was far from the frothing, deranged reaction that he imagined. Moreso, he looked... annoyed, but subdued. Patiently tolerant. Even amused, appallingly.

“You should be nicer to your classmates, Saihara.” Kagehara giggled. “After all, they were here first, you know? You may be the biggest by far, but you’re the newest.”

The implication was not lost on Shuichi. That he was just another figure in Kagehara’s collection of Danganronpa characters.

“Um, why are you wearing this?” Kagehara hooked a finger in the face mask and pulled it down curiously. Then his expression cleared up. “Ohhh. I get it. You looked in the mirror, didn’t you?”

He unhooked the mask from Shuichi’s face, tossing it to the side with the rest of the garbage. “I like the lines. They’re not accurate to canon, but since it’s still an in-house design I guess it’s okay? And it makes you totally unique and rare! Super duper rare. I’m the only one who has you, in the whole entire world. Ahhh!” He hugged the unresponsive Shuichi close to him. “I’m so happy!”

He leaned back, smoothing Shuichi’s hair down where he’d disturbed it. “I think, eheh, I think I can deduce what happened? Let’s see,” He looked around with a thoughtful smile, “The clothes in the bag. You were planning on stealing my stuff and running away, weren’t you? Oh, the laptop’s open! You guessed my password and, I think, saw the porn on my laptop? And got freaked out? Um,” He furrowed his brows. “I guess I don’t have proof of that. You could’ve also seen the snuff stuff. Sorry. I’m not so good at deducing. Ahah, that’s probably why I admire detective characters so much, right? Oh. Here’s a deduction for you.”

Kagehara’s hand was gripping Shuichi’s jaw, now. He leaned his face close to Shuichi’s, so close Shuichi could see the specks of green and grey in his irises. “Your body just broke down all of a sudden, didn’t it? You thought it was for no reason? You’ve got that wrong.”

Whispering so closely, Kagehara’s lips brushed his own. The alarm bells in Shuichi were shrieking to high heaven. The brief, horrific contact ended as Kagehara’s mouth split into a dopey grin.

“Heeheeee,” Kagehara made a high pitched sort of squeal. “I actually got to say it! I was thinking about this all day, and I really got to! Ahh. I hate to admit it Saihara, but I’m just cheating. Did you know? You came with a user’s manual.”

Kagehara paused, as if to take in Shuichi’s non-reaction. “Well? Surprised? Yup, and I hid it. No, actually, I totally destroyed it. Yeaaah. Anyways, you’ll never read it, and you don’t need to. I already memorized the entire thing. You don’t think an average talentless person could pull that off? Well, when it comes to Danganronpa, I can. I know everything about taking care of you. I know everything you need, okay? You don’t need to worry about anything.”

Kagehara shifted his hold on Shuichi to grip him by his underarms, and began to drag him, in the direction of the bed. All the while, he kept speaking. “I knew you were gonna run out of power since yesterday. I know you tried to sleep all night, and I knew it wouldn’t work. I would’ve told you this morning but you were ignoring me so I thought, oh well, Saihara will find out sooner or later. You need to charge! If you don’t, various things start to shut off, starting with the least vital and most taxing in terms of processing power. Your body shutting off basically means you’re in power saving mode. Your mind, though, can still keep going for a couple hours. And before I fix you, I think I know the perfect way for you to make up for trashing my room and trying to steal my stuff and run.”

Having hoisted Shuichi’s ragdoll body up onto the bed, Kagehara had left him there to fiddle with his camera. He unfolded the tripod attachment and positioned the camera in the middle of the room, pointed squarely at the bed. He grabbed his laptop and skipped with it cheerfully to the stained mattress.

He opened it and started drafting a tweet where Shuichi, laying limply on his side, could see. Kagehara was writing an announcement for a “special surprise stream.”

“You’re gonna get to meet everyone!” He chirped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter had a super fun "crowdsourced" part~~~~~!
> 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQeijlpGiY1xCGGWZhKy7nechYmsG_HXaG8CPyO9y5ibOO9FSgJX79LUhsm2Bq0F3o47tTOJeqrBnch/pubhtml
> 
> i put out a google form on my twitter that let ppl write "to shuichi" as if they were his creepy twitter followers! i included some of them here, but there were a whole lot! these are just the ones shuichi read, here, but they are in fact all canon to this fic. all of them
> 
> whats that, you say thats lazy writing? MAYBE SO BUT IT WAS FUN
> 
> also, this fic is officially m/m and has a mature rating. soon to be bumped up to explicit. i think this fic will be a very gross one sorry


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! ;__; your comments have been unbelievably inspiring, and im so grateful. i feel bad im so slow sob
> 
> warning for this chap: almost the entire thing is the twitch.tv torture sesh. if you must, skip past the entire first (and longest) scene til the page break

“Good evening, everyone!”

Smiling brightly, Kagehara drank in the sight of the viewer count ticking upwards in huge bounds; from five thousand to ten thousand to twenty, and exponentially farther. His chest felt full to bursting. Mesmerized, he struggled to find his voice.

“W-Wow, I...” Kagehara sat crossed legged on his bed, fiddling with a loose thread at the hem of his sweatpants. “Thank you all so much for coming...” They were his cleanest right now, because he reserved them for streams, because they were his favorite, because they had little pink Monomis printed all over them. “...even though the announcement was so sudden...” He had changed out of his school uniform already; he had to, in order to prevent anyone from zeroing in on which high school he attended. He wouldn’t mind if any of his fans found him-- he’d be nervous about living up to expectations, a little, but happy!-- but he risked expulsion if the school found out about his activities online. “Thank you, so, so much...” On the days when he wanted to, he wore a uniform from another school instead, a stained female uniform that hung in his closet just behind his real one. Today, though, was special enough already, and anything else at this point would just be a distraction, so he dressed down. The pajama look wasn’t so unpopular anyways, judging by the influx of comments calling him-- “O-Oh, thank you!” --calling him cute, among other things.

The viewer count was now ticking past 50 thousand. Kagehara felt the eyes on his skin like warm water. He smiled til it hurt, cheeks flushed. “Um... so, most of you are first time watchers, right? So I think, ah, maybe it’s a good idea to introduce myself.” His shoulders rounded in a little bow, his head inclined respectfully, but the illusion of modesty was fractured by his lustful glance up at the camera. “I played the Ultimate Detective in season 53 of Danganronpa. I’ve seen every episode of every season of Danganronpa. I have every boxset ever released on DVD, Blu-ray, on USBs for when I go out, and, ahahah, and like, even this bootleg VHS port I got for a hookup in some district.” His laugh was dry as a leaf. He coughed, ignoring dehydration out of habit. “The captioning’s all messed up and-- well it’s fun, for a gag. A-Anyways, I... I love Danganronpa more than anything, I really mean it. I’ve always, _always_ wanted to be a part of it.”

Kagehara leaned back on his hand, stretching out and lolling his head to the side, giving the camera a bashfully eager look, finger delicately curling into the collar of his shirt. “I wanted it so bad...!” A smiling, shuddery exhale. A bitten lip. “...And so, I guess I got the idea to start doing streams as the next best thing. As something I could do. I’ve done a lot of things... all kinds of things. Whatever people wanted. There’s nothing I won’t do, I really mean it. Mm...” His hand spread up his neck, over his mouth, fingers stretching like a web over his nostalgic grin. “I’ve touched myself, obviously, hah. I’ve used toys. I’ve cut myself too. Ah!”

Excitedly, he peeled the hand from his face to hold it up. “See that scar? Yeah, I can’t feel hot or cold so well in these two fingers anymore...” He made a fist a few times for the camera, showing off how his pinky and ring finger didn’t flex quite as much as the rest. He leaned back on his hands again, smiling as he recounted, “That stream was fun... it should be archived? Oh, I recommend the one from the second week of November, too! The one with the quote-unquote- _dead_ cat I found; there’s a great surprise at the end. Oh, I kill things sometimes. Tested out ideas. That was back when I dreamed of being the blackened on Danganronpa... playing with animals and stuff, y’know, rats and strays. ...But never another person.”

He smiled sweetly down at his side. Behind him, Shuichi lay in a relaxed curl with his back to the camera, body partially obscured by Kagehara. He reached down and pet Shuichi’s hair, and spoke softly, as if he were asleep and it would be regrettable to wake him, “I’ve got something... _amazing_ to show today. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it before but, the season finale finally aired last night, and I’m finally allowed to share it, what Team Danganronpa gave to me. So... you all saw Saihara’s decision, right?”

Kagehara twisted and wrapped his arms around Shuichi, struggling and dragging his dead weight into his lap with a huff. He adjusted Shuichi until he was snugly cradled in his crossed legs, leaning against the crook of Kagehara’s chest and arm, Kagehara’s other hand holding the crown of his head like a huge infant.

“Ah, he’s a little heavy for me.” Kagehara admitted quietly. He let go of Shuichi’s head; it lolled forward, Shuichi staring down at himself with dull disinterest. Kagehara dragged the large Monokuma plush on his bed closer, and used it to help prop Shuichi up and take the weight off of his own chest. It looked like Shuichi was sitting in Kagehara’s lap while being cradled from behind by a giant Monokuma. Nothing made Kagehara happier to see.

Arms freed, Kagehara tilted Shuichi’s chin up again, and turned it to face the camera. He pressed their faces together, cheek to cheek, his sparkling eyes and Shuichi’s impassioned, hazy ones looking at their audience. “Saihara decided to come out here and live with us. He’s come such a long way, hasn’t he? Let’s take good care of him.” By the end, the words were a whisper. Kagehara turned, and gave a slow, luxuriating, even romantic kiss to Shuichi’s cheek.

The touch of his lips didn’t stay chaste for long. He pressed his mouth to Shuichi’s jaw next, kisses turning wetter and heavier. Shuichi didn’t taste like sweat, really not much of anything, but his skin felt soft on his tongue. He went lower, licking at Shuichi’s neck above the collar of his jacket.

He nuzzled into Shuichi’s neck, breathing in deeply, until he exhaled with a loose giggle. He knew Shuichi wouldn’t smell like anything either, so it was a bit silly to try. Then he was hit with an idea. He pressed Shuichi’s face into his own neck, instead. Shuichi could smell _him_ , couldn’t he? Kagehara’s imagination ran away with him so much, he pressed Shuichi’s nose hard enough into his neck to feel it digging into his skin. He was noseblind to his own smell, so he wondered what he smelled like to Shuichi. Did he perhaps smell human-- since he was now a machine, could Shuichi smell the difference? Or did he smell familiar, since Shuichi was more used to _being_ the inhabitant of this flesh? Did he smell like he hasn’t showered in four days? Kagehara giggled when he remembered. Probably that one.

He pulled Shuichi up, and touched the pad of his thumb to his lips. He rubbed his thumb on Shuichi’s bottom lip, feeling its plushness, its petal texture. He pressed his thumb inside, separating the teeth without trouble, Shuichi’s jaw lax and easily manipulated. Both hands cradled Shuichi’s face, and he drew in for a deep kiss with a curious tongue.

His eyebrows furrowed, and he soon drew back. “It’s... dry.” Kagehara blinked. Admittedly, it wasn’t much better than licking a lamp post. He wasn’t really surprised, though, he’d just forgotten. Shuichi’s body had some limitations, but that’s okay. It wasn’t his fault. In fact, it was better this way. Yes, it was. The more Kagehara thought about it, the more he adored any product of Shuichi’s innate inhumanness.

His eyes fell upon Shuichi’s neck, taking in the pink hickeys already blooming around his jaw and carotid. Together with his foggy, faraway expression, they made him look adorable; but all of a sudden, they also gave Kagehara another exciting idea. He remembered something else he’d read in the user manual, something that he’d been excited about, a built-in feature of Shuichi’s body. It was something not strictly necessary for function, but one of the purely aesthetic details to make the character feel more like it was plucked right out of the show.

Kagehara turned to his shoebox of toys, sitting nearby on his bed. He deliberated over his decision only briefly before plucking the scalpel from the box.

Clutching it in hand like an artist with a paintbrush, Kagehara again began pressing his thumb inside Shuichi’s mouth. “Say _ahh_ , Saihara.” He withdrew his thumb and forced his first two fingers in, then three, scissoring and prying open Shuichi’s jaw until his tongue was exposed enough to be pinched and pulled.

He drew in with his scalpel, pressing it as close to the base of Shuichi’s tongue as he could reach, right down the center. Kagehara imagined Shuichi’s shock, fear, his inner trembling. He wondered if Shuichi was pleading for him to stop, on the inside. He stared into Shuichi’s eyes as if he could see through them, see through the glass and drill into Shuichi’s quivering and crying thoughts. If Shuichi was really thinking them, Kagehara wanted Shuichi to know that he heard them all.

He plunged a deep, neat slice down the center of Shuichi’s tongue that ran down to the tip. Immediately the gash wept electric pink, Shuichi’s bionic blood, and it was pooling in his mouth so quickly, the cut so deep, that it ran over his bottom lip in vibrant, oozing, seductive drips.

Kagehara hurriedly stuck his own tongue out, and sliced it too. The pain jerked the scalpel from his hand; the intense throb had him moaning and clutching at his mouth, legs rubbing together. He ripped his hand off himself within seconds, unwilling to hide his best expressions from the camera, and gripped Shuichi’s face again, and ground their mouths together.

The kiss was incomparably better. Slicker, hotter, sloppier. Every movement of Kagehara’s tongue was agony, drawing pitched keens from his throat and making his hands and thighs writhe. He clawed at any part of Shuichi he could reach: his arms, his waist, his hips, as much of his ass as he could grab at. He hoped Shuichi felt it too, he hoped with all his heart that Shuichi felt this white-hot iron rod impaled through his tongue, stuck through both their mouths, pinning them together like two pigs on a spitroast.

As the throbbing peaks of pain began to melt, the crescendos quieting, the kiss mellowed out too. Kagehara drew away periodically to try and wipe the blood off of Shuichi’s mouth, the swirls of halcyon pink and copper red, and mostly he just smeared it further. He licked Shuichi’s face with the aim of cleaning, but only bled a larger stripe of red up his cheek. It made him laugh when he saw it. He was a bit of an idiot, wasn’t he? Or maybe he only got this stupid when it got this fun.

He turned to the camera, breathing heavily, feeling all kinds of fluids drip from his face. “Hhh... how was that...?”

His answers came to him in crashing waves. The chat moved too fast for Kagehara to read any single comment, only allowing him to sense everyone’s feelings like a physical sensation, like jungle heat. Praise was screamed at him, hurled at him, a public stoning of praise. Under the onslaught, Kagehara smiled, smiled wide with a mouthful of bloodstained teeth.

“Thank you. Ah, it hurtsh to talk.” He mumbled, bashful smile and downturned gaze. The shyness was an affectation. Kagehara felt completely naked in front of his hundreds of thousands of fans, regardless of whether or not he was actually clothed. Outside was the place where he always needed to hide, wincing and cringing and wringing his hands-- and here, in front of the camera, was the place where he stretched out like a cat in the sun, and everything came naturally. Outside, the shyness was a personal failing. Here, the shyness was part of the entertainment value, part of the mutual game between character and viewer, where they both pretended to believe it was real.

He turned to Shuichi again, hand idly playing with the clasp inside the collar of his jacket. He popped it open, his nonchalance afforded by the luxury of time. “Saihara would thank you too, if he could. Cat’s got his tongue.” Kagehara giggled. “That was terrible, I’m sorry.”

He kissed each new inch of Shuichi’s skin as it became revealed. Kagehara thought that the red prints he left looked almost like lipstick. Dead eyes, bloodied lips, hickeys and kiss marks branding his pale willowy neck. When he looked at Kagehara, did Shuichi see him as this unbearably pretty, too?

The comments roared their approval as Kagehara continued undoing Shuichi’s jacket. His hand traveled down the pale, unmarred pathway of bare skin he’d opened. His own equally pale fingers explored, lingering on Shuichi’s chest, dreaming down his ribcage, marveling at his navel, twitching over his hip bone. He pushed Shuichi’s jacket and undone button-up down further over his shoulder and arm, the one nearest the camera, in an effort to share as much of the priceless view as he could with the world. With the softness of the shadows clinging to his dove-white skin and the austere stillness of his ribcage, Shuichi looked like a marble statue in his arms, or like what Kagehara liked to imagine his own dead body would look like.

Shuichi looked more beautiful than him; Kagehara felt no shame in admitting that. The more he peeled back Shuichi’s jacket and tugged down his unbuttoned slacks, the more awed Kagehara was. Shuichi’s body was a trim capsule of perfection, frozen in a glittering moment at the peak of its condition. Before the last trials had crashed one after the other like two attached railroad cars, Shuichi’s health had enjoyed a small period of restful nights, nutritious mornings, and physical activity. Across the pond, Kagehara had been lying braindead and motionless in the dark for weeks. He didn’t mind; he thought it suited him just fine-- the breakable look, the red-rimmed eyes, the breathlessness anytime he had to climb stairs or walk briskly. Shuichi looked good, but it was cute to be a little sick, too.

Thoughts like these, about their differences and similarities and how he liked all of them and everything, rolled around Kagehara’s head as he finally tugged Shuichi’s pants down around his shins, and resumed rubbing his unmarred thighs, then his hip, and then his pinky and ring finger were creeping under the waistband of Shuichi’s velvet-grey boxers.

“You’re so cute.” Kagehara whined like it pained him, pushing his hips up against the back of Shuichi’s bare thighs. He panted hotly against his neck. “I can’t-- can’t decide, Saihara. A-Ah, my cute Saihara. What should I do with you...?”

The public’s demands flooded in immediately, like he’d known they would. A drunkenly sly grin spread over Kagehara’s face.

He spotted an easy one; he could fulfill that request right now, no problem. He ground slowly against Shuichi again, idly. “In his lap, or in his mouth, anon?”

Both. “...Haha, I see. I’ll do my best.”

Kagehara brought his hand up to his mouth, bothering little with preamble before he shoved two fingers as deeply down his throat as they went. He wiggled them, trying to draw up that heady nausea, that swelling sensation like his whole stomach was revolting against his demands of it. Flashes of lightheadedness washed over him in time with his gagging. In the end, it was mostly acid, “I’m sorry, I haven’t eaten...” and he tried to catch some in his palm and transfer what he could between Shuichi’s lips. He fingerfucked Shuichi’s mouth until he made a lather, hoping it was enough for Shuichi to taste the acridity, enough to please everyone.

In response to another request, “Ah, um, I’m afraid I don’t have that stuff on hand. I’m so sorry. That’s such a good idea, though...! I’ll try and get a hold of a blowtorch sometime, okay? For now, well, let’s see...”

Digging around in the box, he soon held up his prize. Kagehara pressed the switch on the cautery pen, and the metal filament tip began to heat up immediately, the small piece turning a glowing, fiery orange.

Kagehara’s eyes raked over Shuichi’s defenseless, bare skin, deliberating over what mark to make and where. His head swam with the limitless power over this body. Finally it was just too hard to decide, so his decision was that it didn’t matter and all he really wanted was for Shuichi to feel it. He should just do it wherever it would feel the best.

He rubbed Shuichi’s rib with his palm, gently making sure his clothing was out of the way, because the Ultimate Detective uniform was authentic and priceless and he didn’t want to burn a hole in it. Adjusting the cautery pen in his grip, Kagehara finally brought it down.

From the second the malpracticing medical instrument touched Shuichi’s skin, smoke started rising from the crackling, dying tissue. The pen drew black, embedded lines of gouged skin, the flesh around the lines quickly growing angry and pink, the edges of the wounds curling back like a sneer. The smell wasn’t like burning human flesh, not like when Kagehara used it to play with himself; it smelled a little like burning plastic, a little something vinegar-ey, and a little like something sickly sweet he couldn’t name.

Kagehara wrote out the characters of his name. He went over the lines multiple times, pressing close to the curve of the ribs, making them blacker and deeper, the destruction more pervasive. Once he was finished, he again immediately set to rubbing the freshly tortured flesh with his merciless hand, deliberately aggravating the cauterized wounds into reopening and weeping beads of pink blood. He played with the branding, even dragged his nails across for fun.

He wrote on Shuichi’s inner arms-- both of them, though the writing on the arm closest to Kagehara came out a little misshapen because of the awkward angle. Nothing very contemplative, just words Kagehara liked, _execution_ and _beheading_ and _lynching_ and _punishment_ and so on. On his hips where the skin was thinnest, stretched over the bone. On his hands-- Kagehara cradled Shuichi’s hand in his own, and dug the burning red filament into each of his fingertips, trying to burn them off if he could manage it. He drew repeated swirls and aimless circles in Shuichi’s pale palm, just to set as many nerves on fire as possible. He gouged lines through the most delicate skin of Shuichi’s chest, licking his nipples after the injury, then pulling back and doing it again and again. Every injury to Shuichi’s body made his own mouth moan, every burn stole his own breath, made him feel like he could feel it too. He felt feverish, throat scratchy from breathing in the sweet smoke. He hoped Shuichi could feel it too. He felt like everything could be shared between their mirrored bodies, their gemini bodies, and if he felt Shuichi’s pain it was only the most basic of logic that Shuichi felt all his pleasure.

He pressed the cautery pen at a random spot on Shuichi’s right cheek and dragged it across the whole of his face, ending somewhere on his left side of his jaw. He went as slowly as he could, especially over the lips, where the damage was most warping. A bloody scab cratered Shuichi’s lower lip, and his upper lip had been clefted, almost peeking through to his teeth. Kagehara drew more random, asymmetrical lines; no longer caring about any design or coherence or purpose, the only aim being to dig in, to cause pain. At one point, he clutched the pen in his fist and tried to ram it inside Shuichi’s ear. Even if it didn’t fit well enough to scramble his insides like he’d wanted, it was satisfyingly impulsive, recklessly violent. Then it gave Kagehara a much better idea.

“Please excuse me for a second!” He rushed an apology to his viewers, then gracelessly pushed Shuichi’s legs off of him so he could climb off his bed. Reaching on hands and knees under his mattress, Kagehara dragged out another box he kept, this one just a little bigger.

He tossed it onto the bed, then gripped Shuichi by the ankles. With crude, uncaring yanks, he made Shuichi’s body lie down fully on the mattress. His gouged face lolled to the side, slack mouth giving no protests, unseeing eyes staring at nothing, physically incapable of facing what was coming. Kagehara was over him in quadruped, grinning with all his teeth, one hand gripping a power drill.

It screamed to life, as loud as a chainsaw, butchering the lifeless silence like a carcass. Kagehara held it to Shuichi’s face, even though there could be no outward reaction. That was okay, he was content without seeing it; this was for Shuichi’s eyes to enjoy. He gripped Shuichi’s jaw hard and wrenched his face straight, holding the enraged drill up to his eyes, close enough to interrupt the cold reflection of the laptop light in the glass.

The drilling was so close to Kagehara’s ears, shudders ran up and down his body like thunderclaps. He felt the vibration in his hand, up his arm, all the way up to his teeth when he grit them.

He tried to get his body and mind under control. Licking his lips, Kagehara tried to translate the animal grunts in his mind in preparation for speech. Not for Shuichi’s benefit-- Shuichi knew everything that was in his mind, like he knew everything in Shuichi’s-- but for the audience.

“Can you feel it? Everybody’s love.” He straddled Shuichi, hips grinding down with slow, firm thrusts. “We’re cute. We’re likable. We’re special.” With his other hand, he petted the branding of his name on Shuichi’s rib. His head tilted puppyishly, the softest smile ghosting his lips. “The world’s nice to people like us. We never have to worry-- _hah_ \-- about anything. Just don’t be afraid. _Mmn.._.! I’ll show you, nice and slow. Don’t be afraid...”

He went in. It was so good that Kagehara’s mind went blank. The sound was like a marble in a blender, or a penny in a vacuum, or waiting in a dentist’s office as a child, listening to the layers of shrill machinery and human screams through the wall until they were indistinguishable, spliced together into one unending hideous shriek, rattling your teeth to the abscessed roots. It almost drowned out Kagehara’s long, low moan, his free hand petting between his legs, hips stuttering. Shuichi’s eyeball jerked under the drill immediately, rattling uncontrollably in it’s concave enclosure, his left pupil straying out of agreement with the right, but it couldn’t escape. Kagehara wouldn’t let it. No way would he let it. Eventually the drilling took, the piece lodged in the glass-- the eyeball shivered, at times stuck and at times spinning with the drill like the window of a tiny washing machine, but finally, it exploded into shards. Kagehara jolted, back arched, overwhelmed at the sight, the sound, heat rolling through his gut. He threw the drill on his bed, uncaring of whether it was active or not anymore, shoulders rounded like a mating animal. He pressed down close to the body under him, chest to chest, identical, identically frail, one hand between their bodies pawing himself to orgasm, one hand buried in Shuichi’s soft hair, face buried in Shuichi’s soft neck, panting desperately, riding out his high with a close-lipped moan.

 

* * *

 

After everything was wrapped up, and the artificial light of the laptop was snuffed out, the room was left in the dark, and Kagehara was once again alone, like always.

Except it wasn’t like always, he wasn’t alone. He stood over a body. His body. ( _His_ body.)

Usually, this moment was the worst part. The worst part was also the moment after he finished watching the newest season of Danganronpa; it was the same room, the same silence, the same feeling, so it may as well be called the same moment, just happening at different times.

He’d wished countless times that he could wipe his brain clean, so he could watch it all over again, and again, and again, and that way he’d never have to feel what he feels after the final credits have rolled and the TV stopped playing and he’s sitting quietly in the dark.

For as long as he could remember he’d coveted a dream-like existence of uninhibited hedonism, but he’d never really believed it could be within reach. What rational person would? If having fun all the time were possible then everyone would do it. Kagehara subsisted on his rations of happiness, just like everybody else. That’s how the world was.

That was what he had believed, until now.

Any time he wanted more Danganronpa, he only had to look in his own apartment for a neverending source. Unlike his TV which ran out of episodes to show, Shuichi never ran out of himself to give.

Kagehara fell in love with Shuichi in season 53. It wasn’t the character he had asked to play, but Team Danganronpa always knew what he wanted better than he did, and he knew from the first moment Shuichi had broken down, his delicate voice thick with anguish, his gentle heart breaking in high definition, that everyone was going to love him. Kagehara loved him. Shuichi was a genius stroke, every last detail designed to be as lovable as possible. Everyone online agreed.

Kagehara loved him. He was lying down next to Shuichi, leg hooked over his, arm hugging him like a plush. Face nuzzled into his neck, because Kagehara wasn’t over the novelty of having someone to do that with. He wondered out of no where if this was how people lied together after consecrating their marriage. The glass from Shuichi’s pulverized eye still littered his mattress, probably embedding into his skin, but he was much too comfortable to bother with it. Maybe every time he lied on this mattress from now on the glass would stick him, and take him back to this moment. Maybe it wasn’t even necessary, because maybe he’d have time to get used to this, to him and Shuichi breaking each other every night on this mattress. An eternity would be enough time to get used to it, he thinks. Maybe.

 

* * *

 

“Do you know the color of the sky?”

“Blue.”

“Can you tell me your occupation?”

“Student.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Umm. A hospital?”

“You’re at a medical facility owned by Team Danganronpa that is exclusively concerned with caring for participants of the show. The sole purpose of this center is rehabilitating any physical effect the game may have had on you, so please, feel free to voice any concerns you have at any time.”

“Was I good? On, on the show?”

The man in the white coat stared at him oddly. “...That is... I meant moreso, um, concerns related to your health.”

“Oh.” Kagehara blinked. “I-I’m feeling fine, thank you.”

He gave a little bashful laugh, because that was customary, just as the concern about his health was customary. It was mutually performative, because Kagehara’s health didn’t really matter. What mattered was whether or not he had been good.

“...Well, you’re orientated. Cognition seems fine. Slight loss of muscle mass, but nothing bad enough to fit the criteria of VR deconditioning... Alright. I’m going to go ahead and recommend a discharge for you.”

Shortly after the man left, a nurse came in to return the school bag he’d been holding at the time of his kidnapping. Everything inside was accounted for, except for the crepe he’d bought for dinner from a street vendor. Curious, Kagehara asked the nurse why that was.

“That was several weeks ago.” She quirked a brow, laughing a little at him. “If we’d kept it, it would’ve been garbage by now.”

Blushing at his mistake, Kagehara only then noticed the wrinkle in his sense of time. It was such a weird thing to wrap his mind around; he _felt_ like it had all just happened yesterday. Just yesterday he had been walking home from school, the same as every day, and then there had been the blur of clammy hands, the pounding fear, the struggle against brick-like bodies, and the interior of a black van just before a sweet smell snuffed him out.

He walked alongside the nurse, who accommodated his compromised endurance with a gentle pace, and who was serving as his guide down the winding halls. Speaking to new people was always a little daunting, but he was too curious not to voice what was on his mind. “Um. Excuse me, I have a question...?” She nodded receptively. His shoulders relaxed a little. “So, uh, why _did_ Team Danganronpa kidnap the people who auditioned? Were they afraid we would change our minds?”

“No, not particularly. There’s no rejecting a casting call once you submit an audition video, that’s all in the fine print. It’s just easier to reprogram a stressed brain than a calm one.” The nurse explained casually. “You see this same method used by cults, the media-- even ‘troubled teen sleepaway camps’ sometimes hire kidnappers to drag the children out of bed in the middle of the night, to maximize disorientation and so on. Acute unmanageable stress coupled with brainwashing disables the individual from relying on their own coping mechanisms, and brute-forces acceptance of new, shocking circumstances. It makes it easier to incept new ideas that otherwise the mind would be able to rationalize against-- such as, for our purposes, implanted memories.”

Kagehara blinked owlishly at her, then smiled. “That-- that makes sense! So... does that work with everyone?”

“Why, what are you planning?” She joked. She lead them to an elevator, pushing a button. “Anyway, if you’re feeling up to it, there’s an official representative waiting to speak to you in an office on the ground floor. It’s about an opportunity for a promotional gimmick we’re trying to-- Ah!”

The elevator had only just opened behind her, but the nurse dashed to halt Kagehara. “Young man, this area has limited access! Entering is a breach of patient confidentiality laws. Please don’t just enter treatment areas without permission.”

“But! But I saw Ouma in there!” Kagehara gasped.

Admittedly, all he knew about Kokichi Ouma technically didn’t amount to _much_. He only knew what he’d gleamed from his twitter feed, scrolling through his phone, laying in the hospital bed while waiting to be discharged, before the looming threat of spoilers finally burned him and he was forced to self-exile. But he knew enough to know there _was_ a Kokichi Ouma in the cast, and there, glimpsed through the windows of the double doors peering into a wide room, that was definitely Kokichi Ouma.

Kagehara gaped through the window of the door, standing obstinately against the nurse’s increasingly insistent tugging. That was definitely Kokichi Ouma, but he looked nothing like the screenshots at all. The impression Kagehara had gotten of Kokichi Ouma was a trickster sort of character, a vicious entertainer, whom Kagehara saw one tweet adoring and another tweet vilifying, but who universally, people couldn’t seem to stop talking about.

This Kokichi Ouma glimpsed through the door did not look like someone worth talking very much about. This Kokichi Ouma looked more like a mousy little creature, something colorless and impactless that is born and dies at the bottom of the food chain. By some austere dissection he had been stripped of his cunning eyes, his flashy clothes, his charismatic grandeur, seemingly everything but his skeleton and the skin that stretched over it. The Kokichi Ouma glimpsed through the door was mundanity incarnate, a pale face made paler in a tent-like black sweatshirt, small bird legs made smaller jutting demurely in a wheelchair.

Mundane or not, Kagehara was still starving to talk to him, unable to focus on the nurse insisting about some irrelevant meeting, until the nurse began saying something that all of a sudden sounded _very_ relevant.

“The gimmick in question will allow you to meet face to face with the character you played, Kagehara-kun. The Ultimate Detective? Shuichi Saihara? If you come along you can meet him, you know.”

Kagehara whipped his head around, and nearly tripped over his feet rushing to join her in the elevator just before it closed, and pestered her with questions the entire ride that she deflected with a patient smile. After that first hook, all she said thereafter was that that she wasn’t in a position to know details and that he should save his questions for the meeting.

Kagehara was so excited by the things being promised, so single-mindedly excited with all the nuance of a dog smelling ham, that all other thoughts fell out of his head-- not to be recollected until he was sitting in front of his TV watching Kokichi Ouma onscreen, and by then, he had even more pressing concerns. Namely, the measly handful of days standing between him and the arrival of the rarest, best, _ultimate_ addition to his Danganronpa collection since the very dawn of his obsession.

**Author's Note:**

> sooo i had an idea for an au i wanted to share! i'm not 100% sure how far ill go with this, i was just itching to get the idea out there. i definitely have ideas for this, like tons, but i also have like five other ideas for drv3 fics and ive written 6k words for all of them and none of them are finished. so HARD TO SAY
> 
> also, i had to call pregame something here because i had no choice lol, and i hear kagehara is a common enough fanon name for him


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